Make and submit video to YouTube

I ask students to create and share short videos of their work. Often, these are “lightning talks,” 2-3 minute presentations. Some lab reports I ask for longer videos, ten minutes, suitable for conference presentations. Regardless, once your slide show is complete you just need to record a narrated presentation of your slides. Keep the length to the required time limit for your assignment.

You need slides and a script. This page is not about that process, although we simply note about the narrative — don’t provide a manuscript-like document and then — yikes — read from it. Instead, gear for natural language approach — here’s a link to a suggested voice to help. Practice. When ready, pick a well lit room, get comfortable, and talk to your computer while it records you by screen recording or screencast. Review and edit your work.  It is highly unlikely you’ll get it in one take — which is why a double-system recording workflow, record video and audio separately, is best.

Screen recording (screencast) option

Apple KeyNote and desktop version of Microsoft PowerPoint (not the free online version) have built in routines for recording video from your presentation. Google Slides and LibreOffice Impress — both free Microsoft alternatives — will require you to record from screen, which for macOS is easy to do with included QuickTime player.

Many possible workflows, but here’s one common for macOS users: Google Slides presentation and QuickTime Player.

After creating the presentation and preparing a script edited to stay within the time constraints, start Quicktime Player app, select File → New Screen Recording, then choose to record the entire screen or a selected area. Configure audio to use your microphone for voice-over, start the recording, then play your Google Slides presentation, talking to your MacBook microphone along the way. Click Stop in the menu bar to save the video.

For Windows users, use the Xbox Game Bar to record Google Sheets presentation by pressing Windows Key + G, ensuring your browser is active. Start recording via the Capture widget or Windows Key + Alt + R, toggle microphone audio if needed to capture voice-over, and stop via the floating timer. Recordings save as MP4 files in Videos → Captures.

Double-system recording option

Alternatively — and for best control of the product — it’s simple enough to save your slides as jpeg images and build your video and audio narration in iMovie (macOS) or ClipChamp (Microsoft Windows 11). I have not used it, but Chromebook Video editor at veed.io looks promising. There are plenty of tutorials “out there…” I also recommend OBS Studio — available for macOS or Windows and Linux too — something I came to rely on for live streaming and recorded videos during Covid19 pandemic. OBS Studio can be used to achieve the double-system recording workflow with use Source Record plugin installed.

The double-system recording approach is more involved, and it’s more involved. For example, in order to sync audio and video, you’ll want to record in your videos distinctive reference points — like a hand-clap or old school clapboard/slate — then in post-production, use editing tools to synchronize audio and video to these reference points in the video. Quicktime or Xbox screencast options work, but can be tricky to get the timing right. The double-system allows the most control and, with practice, is a much better option than trying to re-record screencast attempts to meet the requirements. To get started with iMovie, start with Apple How to... For ClipChamp, see ClipChamp training center. OBS Studio is open source and free, which means you rely on the kindness of strangers and the many forums to gain help on achieving tasks. To get started, see documentation at Welcome to OBS Studio’s documentation and the QuickStart Guide.

What to record

You need to save your completed video to a file. The recommended video file type is mp4 (see https://support.google.com/youtube/troubleshooter/2888402) and h. 264 video codec with a standard aspect ratio of 16:9 (see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6375112). Quicktime player defaults to mov format, Xbox defaults to mp4 formats. YouTube accepts mp4 and mov formats for video upload — along with many others (see Supported YouTube file formats).

Submit the video

For Chaminade students: Upload your media file to YouTube. No files will be accepted or graded if sent to the instructor’s email account, no exceptions.

To load your media file to YouTube, follow these instructions at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57407?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop.

Submit YouTube link this page

For Chaminade Students — share url link in CANVAS. While you are uploading the video file to YouTube, you will be asked to select the video’s privacy settings: I recommend that you set the video privacy settings to Unlisted.

Once your video file is uploaded, copy and share the video’s url address in the space provided in the course CANVAS assignment page.

For help, see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57741?hl=en&ref_topic=9257102.

That’s it — should be good to go!

/MD